Issue #6: X, Realigned.

Advanced chapters in my Pat.reon.

Pat.reon.com/Saintbarbido.

::--------------------------::

(Kane's P.O.V)

I didn't immediately delve into training.

Despite the implied simplicity of the whole affair, one needed to not only prepare the body but the mind.

Awakening new and powerful abilities was all well and good, but without the correct mindset, synergizing them with the rest of my skillset would be an issue.

Which is why, I started off the training montage with meditation. Or rather tried...

"Wake up prisoner! It's Chow-time."

The bars of my cell cried out with a metallic clang just as I closed my eyes.

The loud noise disrupted my concentration, prompting an annoyed sigh as I opened them.

'Who's the brat with short blue hair, glaring at me and holding a tray?'

Said blue-haired girl, aside from being short, was also young—certainly younger than Diana. She appeared to be no older than 18.

She was standing on the other side of my cell, dressed in the only non-combat clothes I had seen so far on an Amazon; a simple white Chiton.

Her brows were scrunched up, cheeks puffed out as her glare was dialled up to 11. Why was she so mad?

I called her a brat out loud, didn't I? Oh well.

"You're too noisy. Leave."

I dismissed, ignoring her while trying to regain the lost focus.

Meditation needed concentration. And noise was a chief distraction. Too much static and it wouldn't activate.

Forcing it would only result in getting bored or falling asleep.

I winced as something metallic was slid inside the cell, right under the bars. The noise made me grit my teeth in irritation.

She was still here.

Why?

I opened my eyes a second time, meeting her gaze head on.

She kept shooting me this intense look for a while— props for the effort.

But, after a 20-second stare-down, she caved and looked away, giving a little petulant snort.

"Be thankful the Princess decided to spare your worthless life."

She remarked in a scathing tone.

Oh. So that's why she was being annoying.

I narrowed my gaze at her, making my irritation clear.

Her body went ramrod stiff and she gulped. Without another word, she turned around and walked away hurriedly.

Peace at last.

Now, where was I?

Meditation had a...ah...

The scent of meat reached my nostrils, and I breathed in deeply, savoring it.

My stomach loudly growled, making it's eagerness known.

Unintentionally, my eyes fell on the tray the girl had brought for me.

It held a chunk of meat, a piece of bread and a goblet filled to the brim with wine- beckoning me.

Food. Not exactly first class but the meat would be good for the body, and the bread would give me a burst of energy needed to truly push myself.

I had been running low on energy since being stranded on the Island.

And while I could push myself and meditate without eating, there was simply no reason to.

Meditation thrived in the stability of the mind after all.

I pulled the tray my way and took a sip of the wine, sloshing it around my mouth, checking for poison.

Diana might have fought to keep me alive, but that sentiment was not shared among her people. It was evident in their blatant hostility.

It seemed probable that someone might attempt to poison my drink. Why wait for 7 days when eliminating a target could be as simple as lacing their food with poison?

I swallowed the mouthful of wine.

Yup it was poisoned alright.

I grabbed the bread and took a large hungry bite, sighing in content as I swallowed.

Hunger was one of the few things I despised. It made you weak. The minute I get some semblance of true power, I was doing away with these types of weaknesses.

The poison was in the bread too. Less than in the wine, yet lethal enough to kill. Luckily the meat remained unspoiled.

Aconite also known as Wolfsbane has a bitter taste that would have given away the ruse on the first bite. With the wine, they tried to cover up the taste with sweetness.

Knowing all this, it would seem counter productive that I would still devour the poison. The reason for that was simple.

Since birth, my metabolism was trained to adapt to various poisons.

Aconite was one of them.

I cleared out the tray pretty quickly, my hunger demanded no less.

The metal used in making the tray did grab my attention briefly. It was incredibly dense and made a dull thunk when struck.

It resembled the metal used in crafting their lances. I thought that was exclusive to weapons.

I guess not. Still...

"How are they able to refine Osmium into a workable ore?"

I wondered out loud, turning the tray over; It was inscribed with weird art and symbols on the edges and bottom.

Osmium stood out as the most resilient naturally occurring metal.

If Themiscyra could refine and utilize it to make not only weapons but something as mundane as a tray, then the Island of Women might have something valuable for me.

Perhaps being stranded here wasn't as much of a disadvantage as I had initially believed. How enlightening.

Back to meditation,

It had a variety of uses, most of which I was trained in.

For instance, self-Hypnosis.

With limited time to naturally adapt to the more esoteric aspects of my newfound power, my only recourse was to hypnotize that control into myself.

When I was 12, I was injected with a drug that robbed all my senses. From sight, taste, sensation, smell to something as innocuous as balance.

It was a component of my graduation, you see. The aim was to produce a proficient Operative, capable of accomplishing any assigned mission in any environment or condition.

And what better way to train such an Assassin but by robbing them of all their natural advantages, giving them a single blunt knife and throwing them in a pit to survive against other Assassins in training?

For 2 weeks, I was forced to learn how to listen without listening, see without seeing, rely on the environment and most of all, sense killing intent.

Within a fortnite, we were pushed to the brink of true despair.

I killed and was almost killed in return. My comrades turned into enemies.

I learned the unadulterated meaning of fear...but most importantly, robbed of all my senses, I became aware of my own body.

An ability that I honed and trained over the course of a decade, pushing it to the peak until it metamorphosized into something close to superhuman.

It evolved into Proprioception.

Put simply, Proprioception is the ability to sense your body's position, movement, and orientation without relying on visual cues, providing an internal map for spatial awareness.

The ability I was trying to employ was an advanced application of both Self Hypnosis and Proprioception.

The purpose being to realign my mind with my body, taking the first step to full control of my new abilities.

My heart thrummed low within my chest, sending echoes of palpitations and power throughout my entire body.

The hands laid limblessly on my knees, back straight and eyes closed as I ignored the outside world, focusing only on my breath.

The external mattered less than what was happening internally.

Years of training finally paid of.

I found myself in a familiar darkness.

The veil that acts as the bridge between the conscious and sub-conscious.

A darkness that is the denial of sensation, the denial of blood rushing through the veins. Of my lungs inflation upon each inhale and the subsequent exhale.

Eventually, everything faded away until the darkness was what remained.

Within it, a light bloomed from afar.

A single string that connected my mental self with my physical one.

Oddly enough, the strand resembled a spider's silk filament, stretching from one end of the darkness to the other.

I reached out with a tendril of will, touching upon the filament. Immediately the whole thing started thrumming.

No, that is inaccurate. It didn't start. It had always been thrumming with vibrations since the spider's bite. An indication of the unstable nature of these powers.

I dove deeper into understanding the string and felt myself fall into the ebb and flow of sourceless thoughts, insticts and primal urges.

Some of which were mine...others a bleeding effect from...somewhere.

The string was connecting not only my mind and body but something else. Something massive and beyond comprehension.

Something I resolved to investigate in the future, when I didn't have the threat of execution hanging over my head.

That said, I had achieved the first step to Realigning my mind with my body: touching upon the link between the two.

Now for the next step, Self-Hypnosis.

{What am I? What are these abilities? And how should I use them?}

I projected the words through the darkness, plaintive, soft and most of all questioning.

It wasn't long before I got a response.

{You are a Spider-Man. You shall change the world. To Punish, to create, to destroy, to avenge and most importantly, to Save}

My sub-conscious echoed back at me from the darkness, giving an answer to all my queries.

Save? Create? I mean I understand Punish, avenge and destroy but the other two were a different story.

'I guess I'll have to learn...how to save. And create. Hard to when all my life I've only been destroying...'

And yet, a smile worked it's way onto my face. Those words came from my Sub-conscious. It was what I truly wanted. My true unfiltered purpose and desire.

"I see now."

I muttered in understanding and acceptance, opening my eyes after what felt like a long time.

It was no longer morning. The light filtering through the bars of my cell from above the staircase was feeble and dim.

The tray was also missing, the guards must have taken it away during my Meditation.

Speaking of which, I looked down at my body, seeking out changes.

The first thing I noticed was that my clothes clung to my skin like they were glued on.

Not only that but I couldn't get up. My butt seemed to have been fused onto the rough ground.

"I know what this is," I exclaimed, pushing my glasses up.

It was how Spider-Man crawled on walls.

By using Microscopic hairs on his skin, to create an electromagnetic field that enabled him to stick to any surface by interacting with the molecules.

The same thing was happening here, I was sub-consciously using Wall sticking, and by merely willing it, could activate or deactivate it.

I was free to move my butt again. Yay.

I raised my palm to my eyes, attempting to identify the fine hairs.

They were small enough that even with my enhanced sight, simply seeing them was difficult.

And yet, I could perceive a certain charge across my entire body. It warped and wobbled above my skin. An attraction...and something more.

I pressed the palm onto the ground, willing for it to be stuck.

Unsurprisingly, I couldn't pull it away. But I knew that already, now I wanted to see how strong the adhesive force was.

With a bit of force, I pulled my hand up, tearing away a sizable chunk of the floor around my palm. It clung stubbornly, refusing to fall despite gravity.

In conclusion, pretty strong.

The chunk made a dull sound impacting the floor as I stopped sticking it onto me.

I watched how the field around me acted in relation to that chunk of the floor and filed it away for latter.

Seems like the Self-Hypnotism worked.

That was one power down.

I wouldn't have to worry about loss of control anymore.

My only gripe was the confined space of my cell. If not for that, I would have given wall crawling a shot.

Although the food arrived, the move to a larger cell, providing more workspace, hadn't happened. And I was yet to hear feedback from Diana.

Politics most likely.

I jumped to my feet. Okay, the only thing I could do was work with what I had.

I looked around the cell, studying it's structure. As stated before, the cell was constructed through stacking multiple boulders together.

At least that was the case for the back portion of the wall.

I rapped my knuckles across one such boulder. The sound reverberated through the entire cell.

A grin worked its way onto my face. Maybe I didn't need a bigger space to train in.

Maybe all I had to do was get creative.